2024 U.S. Open runner-up Jessica Pegula will lead a brand new 13-person committee to suggest modifications to the ladies’s tennis calendar, rating level guidelines and necessities for participation in sure tournaments, in keeping with a letter despatched by WTA Tour President Valerie Camilo to gamers and match officers on Tuesday.
For years, tennis gamers of each genders have complained that the tennis season is just too lengthy, the offseason is just too quick, and different elements that contribute to accidents and burnout. Mr Camillo stated the Tour Structure Council would make suggestions to the WTA Board of Administrators. She hopes the revised settings can be accepted in 2027.
“There’s a clear feeling throughout the tour that the present calendar feels unsustainable for our gamers, given the bodily, skilled and private pressures of competing on the highest degree,” Camilo, who took over as president in November, stated within the letter, a duplicate of which was obtained by The Related Press.
Camilo’s letter says the council will “first deal with areas the place the WTA has direct authority to drive change, whereas additionally figuring out long-term alternatives that require broader coordination throughout the game,” and can finally work with the ATP males’s tour and the Grand Slam tournaments, Camilo stated in a telephone interview.
“We’re very open to wanting broadly at many potential options to this. … The thought is to enter it with a really open thoughts and an open dialogue,” Camilo advised The Related Press. “We’re not going to repair the entire world (instantly). … The rationale we do not need to wait and say, ‘Hey, let’s do that as a collaborative system’ is as a result of we need to be well timed, we need to deal with making a direct affect.”
Pegula, the world No. 5 and 31-year-old American who will function council president, “brings a novel perspective as a prime athlete and is broadly revered for his considerate and collaborative strategy,” Camilo stated.
“This is among the hardest sports activities,” Pegula stated final yr. “Not simply bodily, however while you put collectively the schedule, the isolation, the psychological facet, how arduous it’s to go on the market and compete by your self week in and week out.”
No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 2 Iga Swiatek are among the many six gamers absent from this week’s WTA occasion in Dubai. Throughout a match earlier than the Australian Open in January, Sabalenka stated she deliberate to skip some stops on tour “to guard my physique.”
“This season is unquestionably loopy,” she stated.
Along with Pegula, lively gamers on the council embrace Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, a two-time Australian Open champion and former world primary. Maria Sakkari (Greece), twice reached the Grand Slam semifinals and is ranked as excessive as No. 3. and Katie Volinets of america, presently ranked 96th.
Camilo, WTA CEO Portia Archer and three different tour officers are members of the panel, which additionally consists of agent, former participant and former referee Anja Bregu, who chairs the WTA Gamers’ Affiliation. Bob Moran runs tournaments in Cincinnati and Charleston, South Carolina for Beamock Sports activities & Leisure. Laura Ceccarelli, who represents the Asia-Pacific area on the WTA Event Council. Alastair Garland, Managing Director of Octagon Tennis and a member of the WTA Board of Administrators.
